The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems has just released the Module 1:1996-2001 CSES Macro Dataset. It is available for free downloading on the CSES website (http://www.cses.org), via the "Module 1 (1996-2001)" link.

The Module 1 Macro dataset reports the system-level characteristics of the 27 countries included in the first module of the CSES project. This dataset includes electoral returns, data about the election included in the study, electoral rules and regime type. These data were compiled with the help of the CSES collaborators in each of the participant countries. Their completed questionnaires will soon be available through the on-line CSES country archives. Complete documentation on the construction of the macro datafile is also available on the CSES Module 1 website.

The full dataset available for downloading on the CSES Module 1 website includes raw ASCII data file, with SAS and SPSS data definition files. There are also 'ready-to-use' SAS and SPSS transport files on this site. Please review the dataset codebook for more information about the dataset itself, including information about the elections during which the CSES module was administered and examples of how electoral rules have been reported in these data.

Upcoming Releases

In early July, the CSES Secretariat will release a merged data file that combines these macro level data with the CSES survey data. This updated file will merge Denmark, Switzerland, Slovenia, Chile, Peru, Korea, and Belgium into the existing file.

In addition to the variables included in the stand-alone micro. and macro. datasets, the merged file will include several "district-level" variables to bridge the individual and system level data (e.g. number of seats contested in the respondents' electoral districts). Another release notice will be circulated at that time.

The complete Module 1 dataset will include data from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, England France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United States (Note: Some of these countries have only recently held elections, and as a result, we are only in the preliminary stages of processing their data but will update the on-line data files when these data are ready for inclusion).

CSES Public Meeting at APSA

The CSES Secretariat invites you to attend the public meeting on the CSES project, that will be held in conjunction with the APSA conference in San Francisco this fall. At this meeting, plans for the second CSES module and future directions of the project will be addressed. Also, we are very interested your feedback on the first version of the CSES macro data. When more information about this session becomes available, a notice will be circulated to the CSES community.

FEEDBACK

We encourage your comments, proposals, and suggestions for improving the CSES project, or for improving the CSES operations more generally. Please feel free to contact us with any such comments, or requests for assistance: